Sharp Awarded Nobel Prize

Kevin S. Subramanya
Staff Reporter

Professor Phillip A. Sharp was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Medicine and
Physiology Monday for his 1977 discovery of "split genes." The award will
be shared with Dr. Richard J. Roberts of the New England Biolabs, who made
the same discovery independently.

The $825,000 award was announced by the Swedish Academy of Sciences in
Stockholm, Sweden. Sharp, 49, who is also head of the biology department,
is the twenty-fifth Nobel laureate affiliated with MIT.

"The discovery of split genes has been of fundamental importance for
today's basic research in biology, as well as for more medically oriented
research concerning the development of cancer and other diseases," the
Nobel Committee said in its formal announcement.

"The discovery has changed our view on how genes in higher organisms
develop during evolution. The discovery also led to the prediction of new
genetic processes" known as gene splicing, the committee said.

"When I got the telephone call from the Swedish Academy Monday morning I
could hardly believe the news. I was surprisingly thrilled," Sharp
said.

"I told my wife and daughter the news right away. Then I noticed that
reporters were already gathering outside of my house," he added.

Sharp plans to take his wife Ann, three daughters, and parents to Stockholm
where he and Roberts will formally receive the prize on December 10, the
anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel.

The Nobel Prizes were established under the terms of Nobel, who was best
known for the invention of dynamite. The prizes are awarded annually in the
areas of chemistry, economics, literature, peace, physics, and physiology
or medicine.

A revolution in biology

Sharp discovered that genes of higher organisms are separated by "nonsense"
DNA. This discovery of "split genes" has helped scientists understand why
cells of higher organisms have so much excess DNA.

The protein-coding regions, exons, are interrupted by the long segments of
DNA that have no apparent protein message, introns. Because many segments
of DNA are subjected to a surprising degree of movement, exons can move
freely among intron segments. This creates an almost infinite variety of
new gene sequences, which plays a vital role in the evolution of
organisms.

Sharp subsequently discovered that after DNA is copied into RNA, the cell's
splicing machinery then clips out the unneeded introns and splices together
the remaining exons. This resulting RNA molecule is the final transcript of
the gene's protein-building instructions.

The path to the prize

Sharp earned bachelors degrees in chemistry and mathematics from Union
College, Kentucky, in 1966, and a PhD degree in physical chemistry from the
University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1969.

From 1969-71, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of
Technology. From 1971-72 he worked at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
with 1962 Nobel laureate James D. Watson, and was a senior research
investigator at Cold Spring from 1972-74.

Sharp joined the MIT faculty in 1974 as an associate professor of biology
and a member of the Center for Cancer Research. He received tenure in 1979,
became associate director of the Center for Cancer Research in 1982, and
served as its director from 1985 until July, 1991, when he was appointed to
head the Department of Biology.

Sharp became the first Salvador E. Luria Professor, a chair established by
MIT in honor of the late Nobel laureate Luria, an MIT biology professor who
started the Center for Cancer Research in 1972 and became its first
director.

From 1988-92, Sharp held the John D. MacArthur Professorship, which was
established in recognition of MIT's outstanding reputation and
contributions as an institution of distinction in both instruction and
research.

His recent public service includes serving as co-chair of the National
Institute of Health Strategic Plan; member of the Advisory Panel of the
Joint High Level Committee on U.S.-Japan Science and Technology Agreement;
member of the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy;
consultant to the NI* on Genome Patenting; member of the NI* Search
Committee for Director of the National Center for Human Genome Research;
member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Medical Board; and member of
the President's Advisory Council on Science and Technology.

Sharp has received over $20 million in research funding over the course of
his career. Some of the companies and foundations that have supported
Sharp's research include Bristol-Meyers; Merck, Sharpe, and Dohme; the John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and Ajinomoto, a Japanese
pharmaceutical company.

Sharp has published more than 240 articles in scientific journals and
books.

He is also a co-founder and member of the board of directors of Biogen
Inc., a Swiss-based genetic engineering company which is now located in
Cambridge.

Among Sharp's awards are the 1990 Dickson Prize of the University of
Pittsburgh; the 1988 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award; the 1988
Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University; the 1986 Alfred P. Sloan
Prize of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation; the 1986 New York
Academy of Sciences Award in Biological and Medical Sciences; the 1986
Gairdner Foundation International Award; the 1985 Howard Ricketts Award of
the University of Chicago; the 1980 Eli Lilly Award in Biological
Chemistry; and the 1980 National Academy of Sciences-U.S. Steel Foundation
Award in Molecular Biology.